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(ThyBlackMan.com) American memory rarely allows complicated men to stay complicated, and few figures in our history have been flattened more thoroughly than the founding principal of Tuskegee Institute. I came up hearing two versions of Booker T. Washington, and neither one sounded like a human being. In my grandmother’s front room, his portrait hung near the mantel like a distant uncle who had done well for himself. Over at my […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) Many of today’s consumer loans are legal but abusive. Payday lenders and used car sellers often steer customers into costly contracts they barely understand. Low-income borrowers with jobs, and therefore, dependable cash flow to siphon off, are favored targets. Sure, there’s a sucker born every minute, as P.T. Barnum allegedly said. But now we have a federal government that’s gone backward in providing protection from predators just as they […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) In 2024, two hotels and several residents of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district sued the city, alleging it is using the neighborhood as a containment zone for rampant illegal drug use and other vices, making the residents terrified to leave their homes and businesses unable to recruit staff. According to the complaint filed in federal court, the plaintiffs did not seek monetary damages. Instead, they wanted officials to clear sidewalks […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) The most persistent weakness in our political tradition is no shortage of talent or courage, but a habit of waiting on one anointed figure to carry an entire race across the finish line. I have been voting since Carter, and I have watched this cycle spin around more times than I care to admit. Somebody rises. Cameras find him. He can preach, he can quote scripture and Baldwin in […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) In righteously remembering and retrieving the enduring legacy of Nana Ida B. Wells- Barnett, we practice the morality of remembrance, honoring a womanist warrior who troubled and transformed the life-shaping waters of the world. She was an awesome ancestor, one of those whose name we will always honor, whose praise poems we will always write and recite, and whose life is a book of lessons we will always read […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) The New York City Public School system is 62% Black and Hispanic. At its eight most prestigious competitive high schools, 80% of the students are Asian or White. Wait — what’s considered the most selective of the city’s schools, Stuyvesant High, 777 students were offered slots. Of those, how many (or should I say how few) went to Blacks? Take a guess. It’s 2026, with equality for all. Three. […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) As an economist, I have spent much of my life thinking about what money does. It measures value. It facilitates exchange. It stores wealth. But money also tells a story. Every portrait placed on a bill announces whom this nation has chosen to honor—and whose history it expects us to carry in our pockets. Ten years ago, the Treasury Department announced that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) Americans will soon choose a set of senators who will take office in January 2027 and serve through early 2033. In the final months of that term, Social Security’s retirement trust fund is expected to run dry and trigger benefits cuts of 22% — not just for the wealthy, not just for new retirees, but for everyone up to and including widows living on survivors’ checks. Somehow, this has […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) The question recently asked by a federal judge in Miami — can the president sue an entity in the executive branch of the federal government and benefit from the resolution of that lawsuit? — seems to beg the question. How could anyone sue an entity he controls and derive a benefit from the amicable resolution of such a lawsuit at the expense of others who are not parties to […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) In more than a few years of watching how power actually moves in this country, I have seen ambitious men mistake a full bank account for real influence, and the rapper Boosie Badazz has now paid dearly to learn the difference. The Baton Rouge rapper, whose legal name is Torrence Hatch, handed over six hundred thousand dollars to a couple of Washington operators who swore up and down they […]